#653: The world’s craziest tweet (AMERICAS)

• Liquid, lads, we try to put a joke here, but ultimate’s gameplay is enough.

• Actually, we’re not even going to link to it. No one needs to see it.

A-new-bis

The Season 4 update has finally landed, and with it comes a refreshed Anubis. Well, not that refreshed.

Among the usual list of additional tweaks and adjustments, there’s one change we genuinely believe is the biggest since the release of CS2 itself - yet it somehow flew mostly under the radar.

With this update, Valve has finally solved the biggest problem plaguing our beloved game: cheating. That’s right. In a shocking move, Valve has decided to VAC ban absolutely everyone who so much as touches the game.

Hats off, honestly. Instead of putting in the effort to develop a proper anti-cheat, Valve just nuked the entire player base. You can’t cheat if you can’t even play the game, right? Bloody genius.

Now, onto what actually matters.

Anubis received several changes, the most significant on Mid, where the bridge drop has been moved closer to Doors, with the doors themselves having their orientation reversed. Alongside this, a series of smaller tweaks introduced a new opening between E-box and the back of B, moved the A site crates up the steps, and added scaffolding to the A pillar.

These adjustments will impact how CTs contest Mid and Water, likely giving them a slight edge when fighting for control. With more angles to worry about, Ts will also find it harder to gain and maintain control of the area.

On the gameplay side, the update brought minor buffs to the MP7 and the MP5-SD, with slightly increased damage, reduced damage fall-off, and a $100 price cut. The reduction in damage fall-off is particularly significant, but whether it’s enough to bring these weapons back to the meta - or even justify sacrificing utility - remains to be seen.

Movement was also tweaked, as jumping and landing no longer affect stamina.

Alongside various bug fixes, Valve reduced audio output latency and added new knife sounds - which, in our humble opinion, sound like sh-t. Ever heard of ‘if it ain’t broken, don’t fix it’, Gaben?

Lastly, we got the usual skins and community content, with the highlight being the addition of the AK-47 | Aphrodite as the new limited-edition item.

Oh, and the devs confirmed that Cache is in the oven. Just don’t burn it, please.

s1mply terrible

Now, we all knew BC.Game would be a disaster, but that debut? That debut was f-cking terrible.

Playing in the IEM Rio qualifier, s1mple and the boys from Iberia were first matched against Ursa, a Russian team that no one in the world has ever heard of. It should have been a walk in the park, really, but the scale of the calamity that is about to be endured soon became evident on Dust2.

To put it plainly, BC.Game were awful on their CT side. A late rally might make it look like they were competitive, but a better team than Ursa would’ve been at least 10-2 up at the half. BCG did then - somehow - claw it back to OT, but fell after the extra rounds all the same.

Then, on Anuibis, despite putting up a solid five rounds on their CT side, BCG lost again. And they didn’t even make it to OT that time. MUTiRiS and electroNic (who looked terrible on Dust, btw) topfragged for them, but that mattered for little as the other two Portuguese players on the team stunk up the gaff.

Thrown into the losers’ bracket, they would then go on to play Nemesis, and this is where there’s also a caveat to this story. The second game of their day started at 2am. Which we would say is unacceptable, but Nemesis were in the same boat, and we don’t see them complaining.

It’s still pretty poor scheduling, though.

s1mple fried on map one, Nuke, with the event being more important for the team's longevity, as really only krazy bothered to connect to the server, and a 29-kill Ancient game wasn’t enough to see BCG continue in the qualifier.

They now head into IEM Krakow with the event being more important for the longevity of the team, as their VRS ranking took a pretty big hit from the two huge upset defeats they suffered.

And we thought playing with CacaNito was rock bottom.

The peaked-in-high-school show

Spirit have played now, and that means that Sam has a bone to pick. chopper’s gone and they’re still the same, so hally, you better cover your ears, mate.

• Should Majors ONLY be in Europe?

• PARISIVION, NIP, and FUT will ALL be top ten teams?

• Stewie, tarik, and kjaerbye are all FAILED wonderkids?

Maybe you shouldn’t tweet that

You guys remember FiReSPORTS? That TO that have been given a 2027 Major? Well, you won’t believe what their CEO has tweeted.

Seriously, we’ve been staring at it all day, and we still can’t believe it.

The now-deleted tweet in question - which is still really hard to figure out the actual context for - sees the CEO, a Mr. Rodrigo Figueroa Reyes, mention a greeting from Elon Musk, and a previously unseen video of Messi circulating as a result.

What was that previously unseen video you ask? Images of Messi as Adolf Hitler.

No, really. Loads of them. It was thirty seconds long.

It has been deleted now, and whether it was originally posted because the CEO is actually a national socialist (hmm), or because it was a throwaway joke just doesn’t really matter. The main thing is that a CEO of a TO hosting a CS Major posted a tweet where the thumbnail was a swastika.

Maybe, just maybe, a TO of any company shouldn’t be doing that. And maybe, just maybe, Valve should probably actually do some background research on tier three TOs (who have never hosted a tier one event ever) before reaching out to them to offer them a Major.

Oh, and Mr. Reyes, just because you deleted it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And now it’s immortalised in this here newsletter. We also have a screenshot of it, too, so you better hope your Major is a good one.

The worst ultimate since Reyna

So, we ask knowing the only possible answer, why exactly did Team Liquid decide to stick with this roster?

Falcons rocked up to Bounty without kyousuke and still had their pants down, with ultimate getting an absolute schooling from m0NESY, begging the question as to why he’s still there.

Yes, plenty of very good players have been mogged by m0NESY, but ultimate picked up just over half of his kills and was quite clearly way out of his depth, just as he has been every time he’s played against a top eight team. He’s just not ever going to make it, sadly.

It’s not just his fault - Liquid are a trainwreck, and maybe in another team he might not be quite so useless - but in this game he was exposed pretty heavily.

Falcons won in OT on map one but were largely unchallenged in map two, racking up a comfortable 2-0 without kyousuke playing, which is a terrifying indictment of Liquid’s hopes this season.

In the second semi-final, HEROIC smacked FURIA on map one (molodoy, bizarrely, went 13-8 in a 13-3 loss), got smacked back even harder (2-13) on map two, then nearly pulled off a crazy comeback on Nuke.

Mirage, map one, was yuurih’s worst map ever, and KSCERATO looked all at sea at times too. His failure to check top mid allowing xfl0ud a free triple was so unlike him that it was starting to concern us.

Fortunately, he was back to being KSCERATO in the next two, though it was molodoy who stole the show, again. Turns out his HLTV placing was wrong after all - he should have been higher. He bossed HEROIC around and saved FURIA’s bacon on Nuke, after a stellar performance in the 13-2 win.

The kid’s incredible, and a testament to what can be done when you prioritise the AWP while everyone else moves away from it.

HEROIC should be proud that they pushed FURIA here, and can take plenty into the new season especially when they get Alkaren back.

Quite telling that HEROIC with a stand-in looked 50x more promising than Liquid with their full roster, really.

In the latest edition, we asked you: Where would you like to see a Major held?

Here’s what you said:

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🤪 Inside DaZeD’s mind (29%)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 🇨🇳 Tiananmen Square (18%)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 👶 Epstein Island (6%)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 🇦🇺 Australia (objectively the worst option here, sry) (47%)


And yes, you have really disappointed us. Shame on you.

🤨 Senses playing tricks on us

• Some of y’all need to stop gaslighting yourselves into thinking something happens. Nothing ever happens, get used to it.

• Did he just… Did he just propose to suck his toes?

👀 CS seen differently

• YEKINDAR is the problem: shots 1-5 clearly missed, shots 6- you get the gist.

• Look, this is all we want at tournaments during tech pauses: some DJ turning the arena into a rave.

📊🟧 FACEIT stats

• Either there’s a lot of fakeflaggers pretending to be Kosovar, or FACEIT is just really really popular there.

• Meanwhile Russia is churning out Level 10s faster than you can say “cyka blyat”.

This TL;DR was written by aizyesque, shoko, AN1MO and napz.
Welshy coded the email.

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